one has made a mistake and lost faith in one,
one may find another. The world of ideas is large and cannot be
exhausted."

"The world of ideas!" she said, and she looked into my face
sarcastically. "Then we had better leave off talking. What's the
use? . . ."

She flushed.

"The world of ideas!" she repeated. She threw her dinner-napkin
aside, and an expression of indignation and contempt came into her
face. "All your fine ideas, I see, lead up to one inevitable,
essential step: I ought to become your mistress. That's what's
wanted. To be taken up with ideas without being the mistress of an
honourable, progressive man, is as good as not understanding the
ideas. One has to begin with that . . . that is, with being your
mistress, and the rest will come of itself."

"You are irritated, Zinaida Fyodorovna," I said.

"No, I am sincere!" she cried, breathing hard. "I am sincere!"

"You are sincere, perhaps, but you are in error, and it hurts me
to hear you."

"I am in error?" she laughed. "Any one else might say that, but not
you, my dear sir! I may seem to you indelicate, cruel, but I don't
care: you love me? You love me, don't you?"

I shrugged my shoulders.

"Yes, shrug your shoulders!" she went on sarcastically. "When you
were ill I heard you in your delirium, and ever since these adoring
eyes, these sighs, and edifying conversations about friendship,
about spiritual kinship. . . . But the point is, why haven't you
been sincere? Why have you concealed what is and talked about what
isn't? Had you said from the beginning what ideas exactly led you
to drag me from Petersburg, I should have known. I should have
poisoned myself then as I meant to, and there would have been none
of this tedious farce. . . . But what's the use of talking!"

With a wave of the hand she sat down.

"You speak to me as though you suspected me of dishonourable
intentions," I said, offended.

"Oh, very well. What's the use of talking! I don't suspect you of
intentions, but of having no intentions. If you had any, I should
have known them by now. You had nothing but ideas and love. For the
present--ideas and love, and in prospect--me as your mistress.
That's in the order of things both in life and in novels. . . .
Here you abused him," she said, and she slapped the table with her
hand, "but one can't help agreeing with him. He has good reasons
for despising these ideas."

"He does not despise ideas; he is afraid of them," I cried. "